Dartford Waffler

Independent Birding at Zaamin National Park | Birding in Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan is a surprising country with a wide variety of landscapes, ancient historical monuments, some interesting food and drink as well as good infratructure that makes the country easy to travel in independently. However, my wife and I pushed this a little further than most travelers to the country by visiting Zaamin National Park where [...]

City Park Bird Abundance | Birding in Thailand

For those of us lucky enough to travel internationally to see birds it quickly becomes apparent that in some countries birds are abundant while in others birders have to work harder to see a wide range of species. This was brought home to me most recently spending a morning at Sri Nakorn Kuean Khan Park [...]

Touristing & Birding at Petra | Birding in Jordan

For those of us who travel with non-birding partners it can sometimes be tricky to balance enjoying time together somewhere interesting and the craving to maximise the opportunity to see new birds in new places. Personally, having a good holiday with my wife is the most important thing when planning trips together but doing some [...]

Rainy Season Birding at Pathum Thani Rice Research Centre | Birding in Thailand

There can be times of the year when bird watching hits a trough because a lack of activity, unhelpful weather or overfamiliarity with a smaller selection of species than at other times. In Thailand these factors are all true in the rainy season with a large number of species absent, on their breeding grounds further [...]

Mountain Birding from Chimgan | Birding in Uzbekistan

I have always loved immersing myself in mountain landscapes but over recent years my opportunity to do so has been limited with much of my time spent in tropical forests and wetlands in Thailand so when the opportunity presented itself to spend some time birding in mountain habitats in Uzbekistan I took it without having [...]

Swale National Nature Reserve & Leysdown – British Birding

October 9th, 2016

Nick

One thing about birding which does not sit well with me is getting up early. Although I am used to it because of leading tours, when I have free time I do not often get up very early but today was an exception as I wanted to get to the Isle of Sheppey in the early morning to give myself time to look for whichever interesting migrants that might be around.

On arrival at Leysdown I drove straight past the coastal park, planning to return later to look for migrants, and took an early morning look over the stubble fields to search for the reported Common Crane. Large groups of Greylag Geese contained some obviously smaller birds which turned out to be 14 Greater White-fronted Geese, a nice start to the day. However, for the second time in a week there was no sign of the Crane despite being told it had been seen shortly before my arrival! Well, never mind, looking for it would give me a good reason to have a good walk around to look for other interesting species. Read more »

Migrants at Dungeness – British Birding

October 6th, 2016

Nick

It has been windy in the East of England for the last few days, and with easterly winds in October usually comes a good variety of migrant birds. Over the previous few days I have had some interesting sightings in various parts of Kent but I have not come across migrants in any numbers so with great hope I headed down to Dungeness Bird Observatory to see if I could find any interesting migratory species.

Despite the brisk winds making birding hard I had the happy situation where I kept finding birds all through the day, with many of them giving me a chance to photograph them. The highlights of the day turned out to be Ring Ouzel, Firecrest, Black Redstart, Osprey, Wheatear, Whinchat and some very friendly Goldcrests; take a look at some of the photographs I got of some of these really cool birds. Read more »

Way Kambas – Birding Indonesia

October 2nd, 2016

Nick

After getting back from leading an adventurous West Java and Sumatra birding tour I have been reflecting on some of the birds and locations we visited during our three weeks in Indonesia and without a doubt the highlight was our stay at Way Kambas National Park in southeast Sumatra.

Way Kambas protects some wonderful lowland habitats and here we found a large number of species that are doing badly throughout their range in Southeast Asia due to habitat destruction. Some of the highlights for me included Rufous-tailed Shama, White-winged Duck, Storm’s Stork, Malaysian Banded Pitta, Blue-rumped Parrot, Cinnamon-headed Green Pigeon, Oriental Bay Owl, Fluffy-backed Tit Babbler, Red-naped Trogon, Rufous-collared Kingfisher, Scarlet-rumped Trogon, Diard’s Trogon, Crested Fireback, Green Broadbill and Grey-chested Jungle-flycatcher.

Not only was our accommodation very pleasant but the birding was exceptionally good and in particular the night birding was awesome, thanks to the expert assistance of Hari Yono, our local guide. Read more »

Ringed Black-headed Gull | British Birding

October 1st, 2016

Nick

Once again I made a visit to Leysdown, on the Isle of Sheppey, to photograph gulls and shorebirds having enjoyed seeing a juvenile Pallid Harrier at nearby Harty Marshes. In order to get gulls to come really close I bought a portion of chips at a nearby fish ‘n’ chips shop and parked the car at the seafront. I then chucked the chips out of the car window, one by one, and large numbers of gulls quickly turned up to eat them. I noticed that one of the marauding crowd had a colour leg ring and knowing that the ringers who originally ringed this bird would value a report of one of “their” birds I took some photos of it through the car windscreen. Read more »

Birding Day at Oare Marshes – British Birding

August 29th, 2016

Nick

On a day as pleasant as today it is hard to stay indoors so I jumped into the car and headed to Oare Marshes where there are always lots of birds. Today turned out to be a one with huge numbers of waders resting and feeding on the East flood with well over 1000 Black-tailed Godwits and Dunlin, Common Redshank, Common Ringed Plover, Golden Plover and Northern Lapwing in the hundreds. However, perhaps the most notable sightings were numbers of Curlew Sandpiper and Little Stint higher than I have ever seen in UK; at least 29 Little Stints and 25+ Curlew Sandpipers. Read more »

Shorebirds in North Kent – British Birding

August 27th, 2016

Nick

One of the things I enjoy most when I am back home in Kent is visiting a few sites where there are large numbers of shorebirds that can easily be seen at close range; my two favourite sites for this are Oare Marshes and Shellness although there are plenty of other places such as Cliffe, Funton Creek and Elmley which also have good numbers of waders too.

Over the last few weeks I have visited these sites a few times and seen a good variety of species including Little Ringed Plover, Little Stint, Bar-tailed Godwit, Curlew Sandpiper, Spotted Redshank, Pied Avocet, Whimbrel, Green Sandpiper, Common Greenshank, Sanderling as well as great congregations of Oystercatcher at Shellness. This site is excellent for photographing shorebirds as they move fro their high-tide roost to feeding areas, although the light can be difficult to deal with; the following are photographs of shorebirds taken at Shellness and Oare Marshes over the last few weeks. Read more »

A Ringed Herring Gull – British Birding

August 27th, 2016

Nick

This morning I was photographing gulls roosting on a field at Leysdown, Kent, attempting to get good images of the two Mediterranean Gulls that were among the flock, when a Herring Gull with a very bright orange leg ring caught my eye. I could not read the code on the colour ring through binoculars so I tried to get some photographs of the ring. The first few photos I took of the bird did not show the code on the ring very well but fortunately it decided to move around a bit allowing me to get some images in which I the code can easily be read – S4MT. You can also see a metal ring on the bird’s right leg. Read more »